Dispensation
by Little Obsessions
Summary: "You would still have redecorated though." Ophelia visits her sister after a long time.


I recently re-read a story I finished a few years ago 'A Fellow Almost Damned in a Fair Wife' and realised how unkind I had been to Ophelia. I'm in an Addams Family mood, and wanted to rectify that.

* * *

You don't expect this, then again expectations you hold quite often fall flat in the face of the reality. A lesson sorely learned and not quite as fully as it should have been. What were you expecting, you wonder, as you stare at the child before you.

It's like peering into the past - sepia coloured, tinged with regret. She wears her hair like her mother - your little sister - used to; neatly parted ebony braids, hanging like thick rope from behind pale ears. She is so small, and fragile looking, but her eyes are deviously black. And cleverer than you want to give credit for. She doesn't take that from the stones.

"Who are you?" She asks. It is not impolite, but it is suspicious in a way which discomforts you.

"Are your parents home?"

Her eyes narrow and she tilts her head to one side, as if she's analysing your next move. You are reminded of innumerable games of chess, where you always inevitably lost. It makes the air behind your rib cage suddenly feel scarce and you wonder if all this preparation, preening, cajoling of your spirit has been entirely in vain.

You may flee at any moment, flaxen hair streaming behind you as you carry yourself away on a zephyr of carefully cultivated excuses.

But no.

"They are," she answers.

"And your grandmama?" The question almost lodges in your throat.

Six months turned into seven years, your mind sings. How long could you have gone on for?

"She-"

But the child doesn't answer, because a lilting Castilian voice - one that makes your very gut clench - interrupts.

"I hope you're not interrogating someone Paloma," he laughs as he pulls the door open more.

"No father," she turns away. "A light questioning in comparison."

And you concentrate on her pigtails thumping on her back as she retreats from you both.

For one delirious second you hope he won't recognise you, and you can pretend you ended up at this door entirely by mistake.

The immediate set of his mouth - hard, thin - quickly extinguishes that notion.

"Come in," he beckons with his hand, gently, and you wonder what has changed.

You know he loathed - loathes - you, once. And the knowledge is keenly unfair, because you were not the only person who committed a crime.

You hesitate for moment, and he steps back to make it clear what he means.

"She will be happy to see you."

You don't know who he is referring to, so rather than thinking about all the people you have hurt - and all the people who have hurt you - you concentrate on the hall he leads you down, tiptoeing over a child-sized bear trap and a discarded toy train.

You know they have children - two - but the entire thought of it has been an abstract concept, as opposed to a reality, until you find yourself picking your way over the very real and solid evidence of their existence.

You watch his back too, the sheen of the scarlet silk on the back of his waistcoat, the neatly pressed lines of his crisp white shirt, the taught wool of his trousers over his rear. The confident stride of his brogues.

And you understand why you wanted to win. It seems a terrible loss to have come second in that race.

Yet he repulses you too; so completely confident and sure of himself and unwilling to compromise. It reminds you, very succinctly, of your limited worth.

And it still stings, even if you've been trying to pretend it doesn't.

Not for the first time - certainly not the last time - you wonder why you came back here.

He turns past the parlour and the library and the study, and you can remember this house with a clarity even you are shocked by. You didn't expect to remember it so vividly, having only visited it a handful of times, but it seems it attached itself to you more than you had given it credit for over all the many sleepless nights you've thought of what happened.

If you are honest with yourself - are you ever? - it's because you envisioned yourself as mistress of this grand estate, and that was your hubris.

You would still have redecorated though.

"Children," he says as he stops short of a door, pushing it open so he can peer round it, "could you go to the nursery please?"

Two sets of willing little feet herald them: the girl you have met, and a boy, about five, who is pudgy and blonde and entirely unlike either of his parents.

"Who's that?" you hear the boy ask his sister as they disappear around the curve of the corridor.

And for the first time it occurs to you that you may have been banished to the convenient footnotes of their history.

Who in their right mind would tell their children the truth?

"I think it's mother's sister," she answers plainly, without looking back, and the boy gives a low whistle.

Then again, right minds were always in question.

He holds the door open for her, and she takes a breath before stepping in.

"Was Wednesday intimidating the mailman again?" She asks her husband, a wry smile on her red lips, without looking up from her knitting.

You think it's like looking in a mirror, but it's distorted and warped. She is so immaculate, is your first concession. So impeccably presented and serene looking. Her black hair frames her face, her dress fits so beautifully, her nails are perfectly vermillion.

But all of that is extraneous detail really.

If she is a warped, distorted reflection of you, it is because the real differences run deep into veins of contentment and happiness and rightness that have been closed off to you for years. Her beauty, her serene elegance, is a by-product of contentment.

And of love.

And that's the difference.

"No," he answers. "Querida?"

She looks up then, and for a second you see panic flash in those brilliantly black eyes, and the calm lines of her face contort for a fraction of a second and you feel a victory you've no right to feel.

In an instant she composes herself - she was always better at knowing exactly what the moment needed - and sets her knitting in her tiny lap.

"Ophelia," she whispers.

"Tea?" Addams interjects, as he comes to stand behind your sister. His hand lands on her shoulder, subtly squeezing through the silk of her dress.

It almost undoes you right where you stand.

You could always rationalise the worst of their betrayal: brazen attraction, strangely aligned appetites for darkness, an ironic obsession with polite conduct, a clearly paralleled hunger for (violently) sexual gratification and a similarly vain sense of self-confidence.

You could chalk all of that up to a match made in heaven. Or hell.

But this gesture of absolute support, of complete commitment to her just makes you want to sob.

It feels like it's happening all over again, and you're still the one losing.

She slides her hand over his, her red nails raking over his wedding ring and his knuckles and squeezing reassuringly.

"Please. But would you give us a moment? Spare Lurch the task?"

He kisses her crown, and you think it seems so effortlessly ordinary for them, and it's that which hurts.

Or is it? Is it the sense of having lost something, rather than the vicious betrayal, that finds you sobbing amongst your sheets more often than not?

He makes a swift exit from the room, and you can't make eye contact with her as she stands, so you turn to the fireplace and immediately regret that choice.

This must be their den, because you can't remember this room and you just sense the sacred nature of it. And the photos - silver frames, shining in the dim lights - confirm that for you. You don't want to look, but you are compelled, and it makes for unpleasant viewing.

She comes to stand beside you, and her eyes follow yours and land on the one you're staring at.

She is cradling a baby, as he gazes at them serenely from the side.

"Who took this?" You ask, before you can truly balance the scales of deciding whether you want to hear the answer.

"Mama."

You nod silently, and your eyes flitter across all the frames on display, a dense line, 3 deep, on the fireplace.

What an accumulation for only seven years, you think, realising there have been only one or two moments of your life that you would want to freeze in time.

"I'm sorry," she whispers beside you. "I am sorry that we betrayed you."

You find yourself shrugging, and you remember what you did when you realised you had lost.

"I believe we all have things to apologise for," you answer and then it is silent again.

Sometimes you can still remember the sound of his gargling last breath as you plunged the knife in for the final time.

"Will I have Lurch prepare a room for you?"

You turn to look at her then, really look at her. At the sharp lines of her nose and jaw, but everything behind that too; the subtle pain on her face, the way the question is carefully constructed to seem casual.

"No," you say. "I don't think that would work..."

You want to tell her that you can't stand it; the happiness in the face of everything you lost.

"I understand," she says quietly. "But please, stay long enough for mama to see you."

Something in her voice is pleading, and you're forced to wonder if she only understands it now; the tug and pull of what it is to love your children, and fear them too.

It is something you will never experience, and it is the one thing you've found it easy to make peace with. Her face is sorrowful, but not for her, and not for her husband either.

"You're very content," you find yourself saying, "aren't you?"

She nods, she never did tell lies. That's why you were so shocked when she took everything you were supposed to have from right under your nose without having uttered a word of it.

Perhaps what you're most angry at is the fact that the suspicion had been growing in you for weeks before, and you felt powerless to stop it. Or that a part of you didn't want to.

Perhaps that was what it was.

Or maybe it was simply envy in its purest and truest form.

She will not ask for your forgiveness, you realise in that moment. Why would she? She might feel remorse - you suspect she does, from the soft, plaintive tilt of her body towards yours as she looks at you - but she won't give voice to it, because she doesn't possess enough of it.

"And you?" She asks, and when she does she lifts her hand out.

You think for a moment about how the life you now lead should have been hers - nomadic, flitting from one company to another, always playing Shakespeare's tragic women, _Desdemona, Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, Juliet_ , - and for the first time the revelation, like a wave, washes over you that you are happy.

That it was not the life set out for you, but one you have forged for yourself. You have moments when the pain still gnaws at your bones, when you convince yourself that your mother chose her over you (she did, but you have made peace with that too). But ultimately, when the tears come, you can go and live lots of other lives if your skin becomes too painful to live in.

"Yes," you answer, looking at her properly. "I am."

She nods.

"You aren't going to stay for mama to come home, are you? You aren't going to stay even for tea, are you?" She asks.

She is the most astute person you have ever met.

"No," you answer, and you are quiet for a moment. "May I write to you?"

For the first time she smiles, and you remember that once upon a time, you laughed with each other.

"I would love that," she says softly.

And she is not lying.

You turn to go, knowing exactly how to leave this time.


End file.
